Nobelprize.org Share this: Award Ceremony Speech Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy , on December 10, 1923 Very early, in the first bloom of youth, William Butler Yeats emerged as a poet with an indisputable right to the name; his autobiography shows that the inner promptings of the poet determined his relations to the world even when he was a mere boy. He has developed organically in the direction indicated by his emotional and intellectual life from the very beginning. He was born in an artistic home - in Dublin - thus beauty naturally became a vital necessity for him. He showed artistic powers, and his education was devoted to the satisfying of this tendency; little effort was made to secure traditional schooling. He was educated for the most part in England, his second fatherland; nonetheless his decisive development was linked to Ireland, chiefly to the comparatively unspoiled Celtic district of Connaught where his family had their summer home. There he inhaled the imaginative mysticism of popular belief and popular stories which is the most distinctive feature of his people, and amidst a primitive nature of mountain and sea he became absorbed in a passionate endeavour to capture its very soul.

The soul of nature was to him no empty phrase, for Celtic pantheism, the belief in the existence of living, personal powers behind the world of phenomena, which most of the people had retained, seized hold of Yeats's imagination and fed his innate and strong religious needs. When he came nearest to the scientific spirit of his time, in zealous observations of the life of nature, he characteristically concentrated on the sequence of various bird notes at daybreak and the flight of moths as the stars of twilight were kindled. The boy got so far in his intimacy with the rhythm of the solar day that he could determine the time quite exactly by such natural signs. From this intimate communion with the sounds of morning and nighttime, his poetry later received many of its most captivating traits. He abandoned his training in the fine arts soon after he had grown up in order to devote himself to poetry, for which his inclination was strongest. But this training is evident throughout his whole career, both in the intensity with which he worships form and personal style and, still more, in the paradoxically audacious solution of problems in which his acute but fragmentary philosophical speculation sought its way to what he needed for his own peculiar nature.

The literary world he entered, when he settled down in London at the end of the eighties, did not offer him much positively, but it at least offered him fellowship in opposition, which to pugnacious youth seems particularly dear. It was filled with weariness and rebellion toward the spirit of the times which had prevailed just before, namely that of dogmatic natural science and naturalistic art. There were few whose hostility was so deeply grounded as that of Yeats, altogether intuitive, visionary, and indomitably spiritualistic as he was. He was disturbed not only by the cocksureness of natural science and the narrowness of reality-aping art; even more, he was horrified by the dissolution of personality and the frigidity which issued from scepticism, by the desiccation of imagination and emotional life in a world which at best had faith only in a collective and automatic progression to the sacred land of Cockaigne. Events proved him to be terribly right: the «paradise» which could be reached by humanity with such schooling, we have now the dubious advantage of enjoying. Even more beautiful kinds of social utopianism, represented by the greatly admired poet William Morris, did not captivate such an individualist as young Yeats.

Later he found his way to the people, and then not as an abstract conception, but as the Irish people, to whom he had been close as a child. What he sought in that people was not the masses stirred by present day demands, but an historically developed soul which he wished to arouse to more conscious life. In the intellectual unrest of London, things nationally Irish remained dear to Yeats's heart; this feeling was nurtured by summer visits to his homeland and by comprehensive studies of its folklore and customs. His earlier lyrics are almost exclusively built on his impressions from these. His early poems immediately won high esteem in England because the new material, with its strong appeal to the imagination, received a form which, despite its special characteristics, was nevertheless linked closely with several of the noblest traditions of English poetry. The blending together of Celtic and English, which had never been successfully effected in the political sphere, became a reality here in the world of poetic imagination - a symptom of no small spiritual significance. However much Yeats had read of English masters, his verse has a new character. The cadence and the colours have changed, as if they had been moved to another air - that of the Celtic twilight by the sea.

There is a greater element of song than is usual in modern English poetry. The music is more melancholy, and, under the gentle rhythm, which for all its freedom moves as securely as a sleepwalker, we have a hint of yet another rhythm with the slow breathing of the wind and the eternal pulse of the powers of nature. When this art reaches its highest level it is absolutely magical, but it is seldom easy to grasp. It is indeed often so obscure that an effort is needed to understand it. This obscurity lies partly in the mysticism of the actual subject, but perhaps just as much in the Celtic temperament, which seems to be more distinguished by fire, delicacy, and penetration than by clearness. But no small part may have been played by the tendencies of the time: symbolism and l'art pour l'art, chiefly absorbed by the task of finding the boldly appropriate word. Yeats's association with the life of a people saved him from the barrenness which attended so much of the effort for beauty that marked his age.

Around him as the central point and leader arose, within a group of his countrymen in the literary world of London, that mighty movement which has been named the Celtic Revival and which created a new national literature, an Anglo-Irish literature. The foremost and most versatile poet of this group was Yeats. His rousing and rallying personality caused the movement to grow and flower very quickly, by giving a common aim to hitherto scattered forces or by encouraging new forces previously unconscious of their existence. Then, too, the Irish Theatre came into existence. Yeats's active propaganda created both a stage and a public, and the first performance was given with his drama The Countess Cathleen (1892). This work, extraordinarily rich in poetry was followed by a series of poetic dramas. all on Irish subjects drawn mainly from the old heroic sagas. The most beautiful among these are Deirdre (1907), the fateful tragedy of the Irish Helen; The Green Helmet (1910), a merrily heroic myth of a peculiarly primitive wildness; and above all The King's Threshold (1904), where the simple material has been permeated by thought of a rare grandeur and depth.

The quarrel about the place and rank of the bard at the king's court here gives rise to the ever-burning question as to how much spiritual things are to hold good in our world, and whether they are to be received with true or false faith. With the claims on which the hero stakes his life, he defends in the supremacy of poetry all that makes the life of man beautiful and worthy. It would not become all poets to put forward such claims, but Yeats could do so: his idealism has never been dulled, nor has the severity of his art. In these dramatic pieces his verse attains a rare beauty and sureness of style. Most enchanting, however, is his art in The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), which has all the magic of fairy poetry and all the freshness of spring, in its clear but as it were dreamy melody. Dramatically, also, this work is one of his finest; and it might be called the flower of his poetry, had he not also written the little prose drama Cathleen ni Hoolihan (1902), which is at once his simplest folk play and his most classically perfect work.

Here more powerfully than anywhere else he touches the patriotic string. The subject is Ireland's struggle for liberty throughout the ages, and the chief personage is Ireland herself, impersonated by a wandering beggar woman. But we hear no simple tone of hatred, and the profound pathos of the piece is more restrained than in any other comparable poem. We hear only the purest and highest part of the nation's feeling; the words are few and the action the simplest possible. The whole thing is greatness without a touch of affectation. The subject, having come to Yeats in a dream, has retained its visionary stamp of being a gift from above-a conception not foreign to Yeats's aesthetic philosophy. Much more might be said of Yeats's work, but it must suffice to mention the ways followed by his dramas of recent years. They have often been romantic by virtue of their strange and uncommon material, but they have generally striven after classic simplicity of form. This classicism has been gradually developed into bold archaism; the poet has sought to attain the primitive plasticity found in the beginning of all dramatic art.

He has devoted much intensive, acute thought to the task of emancipating himself from the modern stage, with its scenery that disturbs the picture called up by the imagination, with its plays whose features are necessarily exaggerated by the footlights, with its audience's demand for realistic illusion. Yeats wishes to bring out the poem as it was born in the poet's vision; he has given form to this vision following Greek and Japanese models. Thus he has revived the use of masks and has found a great place for the actors' gestures to the accompaniment of simple music. In the pieces thus simplified and brought to a strict stylistic unity, whose subjects are still taken by preference from the hero legends of Ireland, he has sometimes attained a fascinating effect, even for the mere reader, both in the highly compressed dialogue and in the choruses with their deep lyrical tone. All this, however, is in its period of growth, and it is not yet possible to decide whether the sacrifices made are fully compensated for by what has been gained. These pieces, though in themselves highly noteworthy, will probably find greater difficulty in becoming popular than the earlier ones.

In these plays as well as in his clearest and most beautiful lyrics, Yeats has achieved what few poets have been able to do: he has succeeded in preserving contact with his people while upholding the most aristocratic artistry. His poetical work has arisen in an exclusively artistic milieu which has had many perils; but without abjuring the articles of his aesthetic faith, his burning and questing personality, ever aiming at the ideal, has contrived to keep itself free from aesthetic emptiness. He has been able to follow the spirit that early appointed him the interpreter of his country, a country that had long waited for someone to bestow on it a voice. It is not too much to call such a life's work great. From Nobel Lectures , Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969 William Butler Yeats - Biographical William Butler Yeats The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923 William Butler Yeats Share this: William Butler Yeats - Biographical William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter.

Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of Ireland in the family's summer house at Connaught. The young Yeats was very much part of the fin de siècle in London; at the same time he was active in societies that attempted an Irish literary revival. His first volume of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period his dramatic production outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import. Together with Lady Gregory he founded the Irish Theatre, which was to become the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge. His plays usually treat Irish legends; they also reflect his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907) are among the best known. After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style.

His later plays were written for small audiences; they experiment with masks, dance, and music, and were profoundly influenced by the Japanese Noh plays. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of moving protests against it. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.

From Nobel Lectures , Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969 This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel . It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures . To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. William Butler Yeats died on January 28, 1939. WashingtonPost.com: Poet Seamus Heaney Wins Nobel Prize Poet Seamus Heaney Wins Nobel Prize By Linton Weeks Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 6, 1995; Page B01 A close contender for more than a decade, Seamus Heaney was finally awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature yesterday. Heaney, the first Irish poet to win the prize since William Butler Yeats in 1923, was praised by the Swedish Academy for his subtle and profound approach to the violence in his native Northern Ireland and "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." His Nobel Prize is worth $1 million.

At Faber & Faber, his London publishing house, there was excitement -- and confusion. The poet and his wife, Marie, were on vacation in the Greek islands and unreachable by telephone. His British editor, Christopher Reid, was also on holiday. Jonathan Galassi, Heaney's American editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, said: "What impresses me most about Seamus is his profound naturalness. In a tone that's all reasonableness and modesty, he can do almost anything." Galassi described Heaney as both craftsman and philosopher. "He can use form so beautifully you don't even notice it. There's a subtlety of mind in his poetry." When asked about Heaney's politics, Galassi said that for a Catholic born in Northern Ireland, "there's nothing of the rabid partisan in his poetry. He humanizes his situation. He shows the ironies." The poet was born on a 40-acre cattle farm in County Derry just west of Belfast in 1939, the year Yeats died. The oldest of nine children, Heaney moved to Dublin in 1976 and has lived there since, aside from occasional teaching stints at Oxford University and Harvard.

Heaney has had remarkable success, both critical and popular, for a poet in the late 20th century. At 27, he published his first volume of verse, "Death of a Naturalist." The book earned him several literary prizes. Since those early accolades, Heaney has won just about every major award available to poets, including the Irish Academy of Letters Award in 1975, the Bennett Award in 1982 and a Lannan Literary Award in 1990. He is considered by many critics to be one of the three greatest living poets, along with Russian-born American Joseph Brodsky and Derek Walcott of Trinidad, both of whom have won the Nobel Prize. Brodsky won in 1987, Walcott in 1992. The literati have just been waiting for the third bell to chime. Yesterday's announcement brought forth an avalanche of laudatory statements from fellow poets and writers. "As the guardian spirit of Irish poetry, Seamus Heaney has, like his predecessor Yeats, received his just recognition," said Walcott in a statement. "It's absolutely thrilling," said Irish poet Paul Muldoon.

"Seamus Heaney is the best poet now writing in the English language if not in any language. This is a great day for Irish poetry and poetry throughout the world. Seamus Heaney has been an inspiration to me and to anyone who is involved in trying to make sense of themselves through poetry." From his home near Tenley Circle, Washington poet Anthony Hecht said he was "absolutely delighted" that his friend Heaney had won. "I had lunch with him in Dublin this past summer and he was in fine fettle. He seemed to know everybody in the city." Hecht spoke of Heaney's joie de vivre and general good nature. Heaney once turned to Hecht and said, "There is no such thing as a large whiskey." Heaney's wife, Marie, added, "Or a short poetry reading." "He's a superb poet," Hecht said. "He also happens to be a wonderful person." He added, "Many of his poems have a stark simplicity. Like the Irish landscape." With his poetry, Heaney has been able to rise above the mundane aspects of politics and religion.

He has used the world around him -- his own family story, the natural distinctiveness of Ireland, his nation's complicated history and his own faith -- to explore the significance of life and the inner workings of the human heart. John Breslin, chaplain of Georgetown University and a Heaney scholar, said, "He's dealt with his Catholicism in different stages in his poetry." In the early poem "Freedman," Breslin says, Heaney describes the experience of being marked with a cross on Ash Wednesday in Belfast, "of being a Catholic, a minority, in a Protestant land." One of the earth-starred denizens, indelibly, I sought the mark in vain on the groomed optimi: Their estimating, census-taking eyes Fastened on my mouldy brow like lampreys. Breslin said that Heaney struggles with the marriage of religion and poetry. He referred to the poem "Sweeney Redivivus" as one of Heaney's most mature poems about Christianity in the modern world and his participation in it. Heaney draws a parallel between the sacrament of baptism and the spring of inspiration.

Heaney has written 11 volumes of poetry, a play and three collections of criticism, including "The Redress of Poetry," being published in the United States next month. Though he is widely known as a lion in literary circles, at the Plough and Stars pub in Cambridge, Mass., Heaney is just another customer. Bartender Muiris O'Beachain said Heaney is very unassuming. "He has a drink here every now and then. Comes in with his wife sometimes. He might be sitting next to a plumber or a high-powered lawyer. No airs or graces." Digging' Ireland’s greatest and brightest – the nation’s Nobel laureates | IrishCentral.com Ireland’s greatest and brightest – the nation’s Nobel laureates Jane Walsh SHARES / From world class writers, such as Samuel Beckett, to peace keepers and pioneers of science the Irish who have been internationally praised.Wikimedia Nobel Prizes are awarded annually to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, economics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. The island of Ireland, as ever punching above its weight, has ten distinguished parties named among the laureates.

Here are the Irish Nobel laureates, from south and north of the border: Samuel Beckett Originally from Foxrock, Dublin, the avant-garde novelist, playwright, director and poet, lived in Paris for most of his adult life. His works, in both English and French, offer a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humor. Beckett is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and one of the last modernists. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation." 9 Seamus Heaney, born in Castledawson, County Derry, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. A poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, Heaney, who passed away in 2013, was a literary rock star. His nickname was “Famous Seamus.” In the 1960s Heaney became a lecturer in Belfast, where he had been a student at Queens University.

He was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997and the Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994 he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford and in 1996 he was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres. John Hume 9 John Hume and David Trimble were co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 due to their efforts in the 1998 Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement). A former politician from Derry, Hume was a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. He led the party from 1979 to 2001 and served as a Member of the European Parliament and a Member of Parliament for Foyle, as well as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Hume is regarded as one of the most important figures in Ireland’s recent politics and one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process. He is the only person to have received the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Martin Luther King Award and the Nobel Prize all for his work in bringing about peace.

He was also voted the greatest person in Irish history by a recently RTE poll of the public. Seán MacBride 9 Once an Irish government minister, a prominent international politician and a former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army, McBride founded or participated in many international organizations of the 20th century. These included the United Nations, the Council of Europe and Amnesty International. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974, the Lenin Peace Prize for 1975 to 1976, and the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service in 1980. Mairead Maguire 9 Magure and Betty Williams were co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. Mairead Maguire, from Belfast, is a peace activist and co-founder with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown of the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. George Bernard Shaw 9 Dubliner George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, was also the co-founder of the London School of Economics.

He was the only person to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1925, and an Academy Award, in 1938, for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film “Pygmalion” (an adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively. He turned down all other awards and honors, including a knighthood. Shaw made his money writing music and literary criticism but his main talent was drama. He wrote more than 60 plays as well as essays, novels and short stories. David Trimble 9 Born in Bangor, County Down, David Trimble was the First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002 and the Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1995 to 2005. He was instrumental in the negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement in 1998 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year for his efforts, alongside John Hume. Ernest Walton Ernest Walton was an Irish physicist and Nobel laureate for his work with John Cockcroft and their "atom-smashing" experiments done at Cambridge University in the early 1930s.

He became the first person in history to artificially split the atom, thus ushering in the nuclear age. Betty Williams 9 Betty Williams shared a Nobel Peace Prize with her fellow Belfast woman Mairead Maguire, as co-founder of the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to promoting a peaceful resolution to The Troubles in Northern Ireland. She heads up the Global Children's Foundation and is the President of the World Centre of Compassion for Children International. She is also the Chair of Institute for Asian Democracy in Washington D.C. and a distinguished visiting professor at Nova Southeastern University. In 2006 Williams was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates – Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchu Tum. The group aims to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. William Butler Yeats 9 William Butler Yeats, born in Dublin, was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. In 1923 he became the first Irishman to be honored with the Nobel Prize.

The committee described his work as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and was a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theater. Stories of the Emerald Isle: Irish Nobel Prize Winners Stories of the Emerald Isle: Irish Nobel Prize Winners Thomas Kendall Ireland ’s literary history stretches back centuries and is founded upon the oral tradition for which the country is renowned. However, it was with the advent of modernism that Irish literature attained an exalted place in the literary canon. While those honored by the Nobel Prize for Literature represent only a fraction of the great artists and writers Ireland has produced, the thematic and stylistic differences of these artists are emblematic of a country that has produced such world renowned writers as Jonathan Swift , James Joyce and Brendan Behan . We look at the history of Irish literature through the story of its four Nobel Prize Winners. W.B. Yeats, 1911 | WikiCommons W.B. Yeats (Awarded: 1923) The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

William Butler Yeats’ fascination with the occult, automatic writing, folk tales and spiritualism was central to his practice as a poet. Through a complex, often personally divined system of symbols allied to a mastery of traditional poetic forms he created a remarkable body of work. His most famous poem The Second Coming , despite its ubiquity, retains a force rarely seen in poetry and its impact spans both the high minded literary world (Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem are both named after lines in the poem) and the everyday. He received the Nobel Prize for literature shortly after Ireland had gained independence and regarded his own success as an extension of and contribution to this victory. Indeed his use of Celtic folk tales can be seen as an attempt to establish a national character free from the tyranny of oppressive English rule. George Bernard Shaw, 1936 | WikiCommons George Bernhard Shaw (Awarded: 1925) I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment.

We can change it; we must change it…what is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods. Author of over sixty plays, pureveyor of a sublime comic touch that at times obscured biting social critiques, and the only person to receive both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar; George Bernhard Shaw is a fascinating figure in Irish literary history. As a critic and a satirist who was profoundly politically engaged, he had initially wanted to refuse the Nobel Prize on moral grounds. He accepted it only after his wife protested (and once he had ascertained that the monetary component of the award could be put to finance the translation of Swedish texts into English). Shaw’s most populist work Pygmalion was adapted into the musical My Fair Lady and it contains much of his sardonic wit and subtly camouflaged social commentary. Much like Oscar Wilde, George Bernhard Shaw’s shrewdness made the challenging subject of his work palatable, lacing the contemporary issues of the day with a timeless acuity.

WB Yeats - literary great and Irish nationalist | Ireland Calling More great Irish writers In 1923 he became the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel committee said it awarded him the honour because of his “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”. It was a fair summary of the career of a man who more than any other helped spark the Irish Literary Revival. Yeats was born in Sandymount, Co Dublin on 13 June in 1865. His father was an artist and was delighted when William started to write poetry in his late teens. However, Yeats didn’t just want to be another writer. His ambition was to recreate a specifically Irish literature, which he felt had been lost over the centuries. He began to explore Irish legends, folk songs and fairy stories, which inspired much of his early work such as Down By the Salley Gardens, The Song of Wandering Aengus and Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea. His early work such as Lake Isle of Innisfree was often lyrical and celebrated the simplicity of Irish rural life.

Lifelong unrequited love for Maud Gonne In the 1890s, he began to take an increasing interest in Irish nationalism. He founded various literary societies and even joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood , although he was later to leave it after becoming disillusioned with politics. It was during this time that he fell in love with the beautiful actress and Irish nationalist Maud Gonne. She did not return his feelings but liked him as a friend. Yeats was devastated when she refused his offer of marriage; his anguish was made all the worse when she later married the revolutionary leader John MacBride – a man Yeats regarded as a drunken lout. Yeats remained obsessed with Gonne for most of his life. When Gonne divorced MacBride in 1905, Yeats again asked her to marry him and again she refused him – she did, however, sleep with him on one occasion in 1908. Nevertheless, Gonne did not want to pursue the relationship so Yeats then asked her for permission to propose to her daughter Iseult.

She too refused him so Yeats, who was 52, married 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees, a woman he had known for many years. Surprisingly, perhaps, considering the age difference and Yeats’ obsession with Gonne, his marriage turned out to be very happy and the couple had two children together. Yeats’ changing styles – a terrible beauty is born The style of Yeats’ writing changed several times during his long career. The early simple lyricism was replaced by the strange more mysterious complex verse to be found in collections like the Wind Among the Reeds. His interest in politics and Irish nationalism was reignited by the unexpected success of the 1916 Easter Rising . A further change in style followed with Yeats commentating on momentous topical events. It led to some of his best known poems such as Easter 1916, with the famous line “a terrible beauty is born”, and An Irish Airman Foresees his Death, which was written about Major Robert Gregory. Gregory was the son of Lady Gregory, the owner of Coole Park and Yeats’ most enthusiastic and wealthy supporter. He often stayed with Gregory family at Coole Park, which features in his writing.

Poet, theatre manager and Irish senator Yeats wrote plays as well as poems and with the help of Lady Gregory and others he founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin . Yeats’ play Cathleen ni Houlihan was performed there in 1899 with Maud Gonne in the lead role. During this time, Yeats threw much of his energy into managing the theatre and championing the cause of other writers like J M Synge, whose Playboy of the Western World was performed at the Abbey in 1907. In 1922, Yeats was appointed as Senator for the newly formed Irish Free State and served for two terms. Sign up to our FREE newsletters Please click on your confirmation email,Check your junk mail folder in case it gets sent there. Email Address He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and continued to write successfully until his death in France on 28 January 1939. In 1948, his body was moved from Roquebrune in France to Drumcliff in Co Sligo where Yeats had spent much of his youth. Nobel Prize Literature Winners - Literature with Hamilton at East Ridge High School - StudyBlue Good to have you back!

If you've signed in to StudyBlue with Facebook in the past, please do that again. Nobel Prize Literature Winners Who won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature? One was a famous Occitan Writer. Frederic Mistral and Echegaray Who won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling Who won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature? He was a famous Irish poet. Yeats Who won the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Pygmalion. George Bernard Shaw Who won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann Who won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote It Can't Happen Here. Sinclair Lewis Who won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Long Days Journey Into Night. Eugene O'Neill Who won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature? She wrote The Good Earth. Pearl Buck Who won the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature? The First Latin American to win it.

Gabriela Mistral Who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Steppenwolf and Siddhartha. Hermann Hesse Who won the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote The Waste Land T.S. Elliot Who won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Absalom, Absalom! and As I Lay Dying. William Faulkner Who won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature? He was a Prime Minister of the U.K. Winston Churchill Who won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote The Old Man and the Sea. Ernest Hemingway Who won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature? He was a Spanish poet who advocated the french concept of pure poetry. Juan Jimenez Who won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote The Stranger and The Plague. Albert Camus Who won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Dr. Zhivago. Pasternak Who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck Who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature?

He was a famous French philosopher. Jean-Paul Sartre Who won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett Who won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan. Solzhenitsyn Who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote "Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair". Pablo Neruda Who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote The Adventures of Augie March. Saul Bellow Who won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel Garcia Marquez Who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote The Lord of the Flies. William Golding Who won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature? He wrote The Labyrinth of Solitude. Octavio Paz Seamus Heaney, Poet, Wins the Nobel Prize Seamus Heaney, Poet, Wins the Nobel Prize By WILLIAM GRIMES he Irish poet Seamus Heaney has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In conferring the prize, the Swedish Academy praised Mr.

Heaney "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." It also praised Mr. Heaney, a Roman Catholic, for analyzing the violence in Northern Ireland without recourse to conventional terms. The poet (whose name is pronounced SHAY-muss HEE-nee) will receive the award on Dec. 10 at a ceremony in Stockholm, along with the Nobel winners in physics, chemistry, economics and medicine, who will be announced next week. This year the prize is worth more than $1 million, the highest it has ever been. The poet Derek Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in 1992, issued a statement through Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Mr. Heaney's American publishers: "As the guardian spirit of Irish poetry, Seamus Heaney has, like his predecessor Yeats, received his just recognition." Paul Muldoon, an Irish poet teaching at Princeton University, said, "This is a great day for Irish poetry and for poetry throughout the world." Mr. Heaney's son, Michael, said in Dublin that his father was on vacation in rural Greece and that not even family members had been able to reach him. Mr.

Heaney, 56, was born on a farm west of Belfast in County Derry, Northern Ireland, the eldest of nine children. He received a bachelor's degree in English language and literature at Queen's University, Belfast, and after earning a teaching certificate from St. Joseph's College of Education, taught at a secondary school in Ballymurphy and at St. Joseph's. He began publishing poems as a student, using the pseudonym Incertus. In Belfast he became associated with the Group, a circle of young writers that included Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and James Simmons. His first poetry collections, "Death of a Naturalist" (1966) and "Door Into the Dark," (1969), immediately marked Mr. Heaney as a gifted lyric poet. In pared-down, tactile language, his verse gave off the scent and savor of his rural surroundings. The comparisons to William Butler Yeats and Robert Frost came early and often. In an almost literal sense, Mr. Heaney's poetry is rooted in the Irish soil. He has often written of the poet as a kind of farmer, digging and rooting, as though Ireland's wet peat were a storehouse of images and memories.

At the same time, Mr. Heaney moves easily from the homely images of farm and village to larger issues of history, language and national identity, creating what he once called "the music of what happens." In 1972, he moved from Belfast to the Irish Republic, eventually settling in Dublin, and his poetry from the 1970's, collected in "North" (1975) and "Field Work" (1979), bears witness to the political turmoil in Northern Ireland, although from afar. "He took a lot of flak for moving," said Henry Hart, an associate professor of English at William and Mary College and the author of "Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions." "The Catholics saw it as a betrayal, and he himself experienced a great deal of guilt over it." Although all his works have been well received, he won lavish critical praise for "Station Island" (1984), the title poem of which, a narrative sequence, drew on Dante to dramatize the torment of Irish politics and history. In a review of "Station Island" in The New York Times, John Gross enumerated Mr.

Heaney's poetic arsenal: "powerful images; compelling rhythms; a distinctive palette; phrases packed tight with meaning." Mr. Heaney, he said, "has all the primary gifts of a poet, and they are gifts put at the service of a constant meditation on primary themes, on nature and history and moral choice." Mr. Heaney's most recent poetry collections are "The Haw Lantern" (1987), "Selected Poems: 1966-1987" (1990) and "Seeing Things" (1991). "The Spirit Level," a new collection of poetry, is to be published in May 1996 by Farrar, Straus. His essays have been collected in two volumes, "Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978" (1980) and "The Government of the Tongue" (1989). "The Redress of Poetry," consisting of his poetry lectures at Oxford, is scheduled to be published in the United States next month by Farrar, Straus. Mr.

Heaney has also ventured into translation, beginning with "Sweeney Astray" (1984), a version of the medieval Irish narrative poem "Buile Suibhne," about an ancient Irish king who, cursed by a Christian cleric, wanders the countryside as a mad outcast, half-man, half-bird. He also rendered Sophocles' "Philoctetes" into blank verse under the title "The Cure at Troy" (1990). "Laments," a translation of elegiac poems by the 16th-century Polish poet Jan Kochanowski that Mr. Heaney undertook with Stanislaw Baranczak, is also to be published this fall. Mr. Heaney is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. His many awards include the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He was professor of poetry at Oxford University from 1989 to 1994. He is currently on a leave of absence from Harvard University, where he has been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory since 1985. Mr. Heaney is the fourth Irishman to win the Nobel Prize.

Yeats was awarded the prize in 1923, George Bernard Shaw in 1925 and Samuel Beckett in 1969.

Question: Who was the first Irish poet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923?
Answer: W B Yeats